God gave mankind the instrument of a voice to make recognizable audible sounds. These sounds evolved into a spoken language consisting of words and phrases. In the beginning language was all the same. Afterwards, language evolved into many different tongues spoken by many different people from different nations. Universal language translation is needed for the purpose of unifying all people of various cultures.
The invention described pertains to a device and method for providing real time speech translation between multiple parties. Translation systems have been developed previously, which include voice recognition systems to receive voice inputs that may be digitized and transmitted to a receiver and further routed to a receiving party. The audible outputs are achieved through automated voice models, or text displays and do not provide what would be considered simultaneous translations between different conversationalists using the original speaker's voice patterns.
Simultaneous translation has been described previously for a plurality of languages with prior art, for example, with the use of an electronic, voice interpreting machine—U.S. Pat. No. 5,724,526—which is capable of receiving input of a source language, a voice recognition means to recognize voice information and electronic translation means to translate the language of the original speaker, voice synthesis means transforming the translated language into vocal information and vocal output means to output the vocal information, in order to translate one language into another language sentence by sentence. These developments are not as simultaneous as desired and often times require the vocal inputs of the speakers to be very precise in order to prevent errors in the resulting translation.
Although speech recognition systems have greatly improved with the continued development of primary communication devices such as mobile telephones, language systems with the ability to provide translations of different spoken words in real time which do not interfere with smooth conversations between individuals by minimizing delays between the spoken words of the speaker and output of the translated language to the recipients, are much needed. It has also become more important for the systems of discussion to function quickly with minimal inconvenience to the users of these devices.
Sound distortions that are generated with voice recognition systems employing current technologies can also be responsible for errors in translations and minimization of these distortions is needed to provide simultaneous conversations with minimal disruption in the language exchange between individual users. Both of these features are key development areas for the next generation of real-time translation devices.